Pages

Thursday, 22 March 2012

Review of the Mariela Sarkima Blending Brush

I promised a review of the new brush I'm excited about, so here it is! The Finnish brand, Cailap, producer of beauty care products, came out with a new set of brushes at the end of 2011. The make-up artist Mariela Sarkima designed the brushes and also released a book on how to do basic make-up (haven't read it and I don't know what else she has done). The brush range includes six brushes, three of them face brushes and three for the eyes.

I had been looking at the brushes for some time, since they have pretty turquoise handles and look nice. However, the package didn't say if the bristles are synthetic or real hair, and I hadn't seen any reviews, and the shop didn't have any brushes I could tests the bristles with, so it took me a while to buy one. I had been looking for blending brushes, since I only owned one and it was by EcoTools and came in a set. I didn't need the other brushes, so it would be just silly to buy more sets to get only the blending brush. When I came across this blog post (it's in Finnish, but there's a lot of good pictures), I decided to give the blending brush a go. The blogger said the bristles were synthetic and very soft, and was generally pleased with the brush.

Here's what the brush looks like. It's 14,5 cm long, with synthetic bristles and a bright turquoise handle and a silver ferrule. The painted text says Cailap by Mariela Sarkima.

This is how it compares to the EcoTools blending brush. It's a bit smaller, but has more of a rounded shape. I'd say the bristles feel as soft in both, very nice and not at all scratchy. The ferrule is longer, as is the handle on the Cailap brush.

Cailap on the left, EcoTools on the right.

The EcoTools brush came in a travel set, so it's really short at only 11,5 cm. I personally feel the longer brush gives you a better grip, and when blending it's important because you really have to work the shadow on the lid.

Here you can see the size difference!

I usually use Gosh eyeshadow brushes to put shadow on the lid, so here's what the blending brush looks next to one of those. The Gosh brushes are flat and made from animal bristle and have held up nicely (I have five, since I don't have the time to wash my brushes every day), but their flat shape prevents blending neatly and the range doesn't have any brush that looks good for blending. The full, roundish Cailap and EcoTools brushes are way better for blending, naturally.

I already got a little excited and have three of the Cailap brushes, I don't want to use the same brush twice without washing it, because I use bright colours and don't want to get them muddy. You can only get them at Sokos department stores in Finland, but I happen to be so lucky as to have one next block ;) The quality of the brushes seems to vary when you look at the packages, some had bristles pointing every which way or were squashed against the top of the package, but I just spent time picking the nicest ones and they have all performed really well. The brush costs 8,90 euros, and you can also buy it in the Smoky Eyes set, which has an angled eyeshadow brush and a regular eyeshadow brush to go with it.

I'm hoping the brushes will last long in my tender care, so far I've washed them a few times and no bristles have come loose or become scratchy, so they look very promising. I emailed Cailap about the fact that they didn't tell if the bristles are real or not on the package, and they replied that they will "try and add" it to the next batch. We'll see, but I'm sure I'm not the only person who's interested about it when making decisions on what brushes to buy.

1 comment:

Yeah it's synthetic. Mariela Sarkima told in December blog meet that if she would've done brushes for professionals then she would've used natural hair. :) I really like this brush :D I just use it for putting on browbone highlight.